Are you happy…and elite?

There was recently an article written on BBC about a study published that caught my attention. One sentence in the article really caught my attention:

It found that women in developing countries, and people of both sexes with low incomes or poor education, were most influenced emotionally by their access to technology.

That makes sense. Technology enables us to go places and do things that are just logistically not possible. Put simply, the internet enables us to belong to and participate in so many different activities with so many more people and institutions than ever. I have generally been of the opinion that the flood of information has negatives: chief among these being that we have so much more to think about. On the one hand, that’s great because this enables us to help tsunami victims, but also gives us stress and worry when thinking about the situation in Greece.

Then there was another item I read on Seth’s Blog which asked the question “Are you an Elite?” And more specifically

…elites have money and/or an advanced education…

and in more and more societies…there’s a different dividing line. This is the line between people who are actively engaged in new ideas, actively seeking out change, actively engaging…

Does technology really make us happier by allowing us to share and connect with other people? Personally, I always have felt what I call the technology burden. That is, when technology gets a hold of your life to the point where you cannot go anywhere without your laptop or smart phone. Of course, in the BBC article there was also a reference to views of psychologists such as Yair Amichai-Hamburger. In his opinion,

technology had a negative impact on people’s well-being by blurring professional and personal time

I don’t want to take the middle ground and say that there are benefits and disadvantages to technology. Rather, my opinion is that technology should improve something in a vertical sense like increasing productivity. However, I think of an image I saw the other day of a woman pushing her baby stroller while riding a Sedgeway. That is where we are today, and that is utterly ridiculous.

What!?! It’s safer than pushing it with the car

What do you think?